Do you notice closer relationship to Skids than for most step parents?
I have noticed with my SDs that I do not have many of the issues other steps experience. We have our step issues, but SDs 9 and 5 love me and tell me often how glad they are that I am their stepmom. Sometimes SD9 has a hard time with me, but almost always during transition times. For the most part, they are very close and cuddly and have never wanted a more distant relationship with me. They accept discipline from me, and their dad and I never have felt that only he should be disciplinary in our family. SD9 protects her mom in every way she knows how, and we do not ask her about her mom's problems or put her in the middle of anything.
A friend Smom of a 6 year old is having a really hard time, wanting to be close to her SD but feeling pushed away. This seems common. This has not been my experience, and I have chalked this up to the kids ages, to their mom's mental illness, and to our good chemistry (we have similar values and temperaments and personalities, so get each other).
What do you all experience in this regard?
oops
oops
Me, TOO!
I have the same issues...hard to be viewed as part of a category that does not seem to fit but is only defined in the negative...though the lack of definition is a great freedom.
I am not a bio-parent, and do not intend to be. I like step-parenting. I do have a hard time with my skids borderline mom's constant fear that the kids' closeness with me will hurt her or invalidate her relationship with them. I feel for her, yet have worked hard to make clear that she is mom, I am not, so it is frustrating that her mental illness makes her perceive what happens in a delusional way, and more frustrating that what her mental illness says I am overlaps with societal beliefs about stepmoms such that her delusions are readily accepted.
SD 14 used to tell me she was so happy I became her mom
B/c BM was the "worst mom" and I was the "best." That should have been my first red flag!
Now I am the worst mom, BM "doesn't care" anyway, and the "best mom" is whatever friend's mom SD is worshiping on any given month.
I am glad you don't have the difficulties some of us had. I had that once with my SD. But once we won FC, and once BM realized what a spiffy thing "no" custody is when you don't want to bother with parenting anyway, SD turned on me and flipped me around in her mind from pedestal to worthless. That was a difficult transition for ME. SD thinks it's a perfect fit.
I think if you don't have a crazy BM or SKIDS who are predisposed to a BM/BF's craziness, then reaching a good family atmosphere is very possible.
me too
BM is a loser. She abandoned her kids. Even when she lived here (very small town) she lived off of whoever would take her in and didn't see her kids anyway. She has since moved 4 hours away. She makes all types of promises she has no intensions of keeping and leaves us to pick up the pieces. It gets a little tiring watching our 10 year old wait for phone calls she never receives, sending e-mails that get no replies and going to the mailbox for letters that never come. She never contribues anything monitarily for school supplies or travel expenses and leaves all that up to us. One of our daughters lives with her grandma in the same town as the mom and the only reason we do the traveling is that we would never get to see our oldest otherwise. She lives with an unemployed dirt bag drug dealer and their n new baby who was born with birth defects. The kids love him and I don't have a problem with him either, I just feel bad because he will have no support at all. The kids say I am their "mom" and she is their "mother" but she overheard and got very angry with them. Too bad. Her loss is my gain, no matter how moody the teens get.